EDIT: first comment much more substantive than original post!
wtf.
"Acting on a request from the Obama administration, a federal appeals court in San Francisco on Wednesday lifted a judge's order that had halted enforcement of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy"
Why does a stay have to be issued so the Justice Department can appeal? Lauren, please stop what you're doing and explain this to me.
The morning read for Thursday, April 18
21 hours ago
2 comments:
aaron,
unfortunately, i haven't had civil procedure yet, so i don't know how all of this bullshit works.
however, i have noticed in the cases we've read that the judiciary typically gives a lot of deference to the military, and in this case they are asserting that DADT needs to stay in place until the military is "ready" for it to go away. obviously, that argument could be used for years if it's upheld. from what i understand, the lawyers who originally brought the DADT suit are being given a chance to respond to the government's arguments, and they're giving them until Monday. so you can bet that right now a team of civil rights lawyers and their ilk are furiously writing up memos regarding why a stay is ridiculous.
then on monday, they'll file their memos with the court, and the court gets to decide who has the better argument.
i wasn't aware that the government was allowed to ask for a freeze on things. honestly, even though civil procedure is going to be ridiculously boring, i'm really looking forward to it. in a book i was reading before school started, i got a nice look at the process, and it can pretty much go on forever. each side keeps filing new briefs saying that the case can't go forward for whatever reason, and the judges keep granting extensions on the court date and whatnot. some of it is totally legitimate, as legal research is time and effort intensive, and so it makes sense that lawyers should have more time to do "discovery" (research) before presenting their cases. but on the other hand, this is why cases aren't ruled on until 2-10 years after they are originally brought.
anyway, i'm sure you can glean from articles that Obama really would rather this be a legislative decision and not a judicial one. he wants a law banning this kind of shit on the books, and i can't blame him. a court ruling is good, but legislation is stronger. but of course, once legislation is passed, conservative groups are going to be challenging THAT in court as well. so I am wondering if Obama doesn't want to kind of orchestrate this process so that we have 1. a law on the books and 2. a court ruling upholding that law as constitutional. that would basically ensure that something like this will never happen again, or at least is very unlikely to happen again.
but you know, the patriot act happened, and we had all kinds of shit protecting that from happening on the books.
optimism! heh.
I can roll with a little optimism. Thanks for the enlightening response.
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